New in Zoho CRM – SMS alerts using Webhooks

You have a customer meeting in two hours. But accidentally, it slips out of your mind and you schedule a meeting with another customer. Oops!

But this scenario could be different.

You have a customer meeting in two hours. An hour before the meeting, you receive an SMS with the customer’s name and the time of the meeting!

Isn’t that great? And you can do this using our Webhooks.

Yes! Webhooks now allows you to trigger SMS alerts to your sales rep and customers about upcoming meetings, demos, payments and other events. Just schedule the SMS alerts about the event details and get notified on time.

So how do you setup SMS notifications? It only takes a few steps. The online help will tell you how.

22 thoughts on “New in Zoho CRM – SMS alerts using Webhooks”

Hi Radhika,
Zoho CRM is being managed and customized very well. All features are properly navigated. Well done work by ZOHO team. Webhook feature is an excellent feature, but occurring some trouble while accessing it.
Will you clear how to manage it.

Being a geek, I like the Webhooks way of doing it. It provides you with a greater control. But I think for every-day users, there are some nice SMS reminder applications that you can use in any web browser. A good example would be http://www.smsify.com.au they even have a WordPress plugin which means you can embed their application into your own Website if you wish.

Havenâ€™t tested this function yet so canâ€™t speak to that, but did want to respond to the objection that this feature is in the Enterprise edition only. There is a reason why different tiers have different price points. The smaller the investment, the fewer features are included. We would probably have differing opinions as to which features belong in which price level, but the overall strategy is that you get more features as you pay more. Makes perfect sense to me that we wonâ€™t always get everything what we want without paying for the privilege. Just saying.

You can use http://www.nexmo.com the Wholesale SMS API to enable your Zoho CRM for SMS Sending. Nexmo providers:- Easy to use Cloud API- 1 hope to any carrier in the world- High deliverabilityOther CRM and customer support tools such as Mailchimp and Zendesk have integrated with Nexmo to enable international and cost effective reach.

I appreciate that the development team is looking for ways to help out your users. The ability to use workflow to send SMS alerts to contacts is a useful tool in a limited set of scenarios for B2B users, but probably has more value for B2C users.However, I think someone really missed the target on this.#1 â€“ Webhooks are only available for Enterprise users. In order for your other users to use these tools they have to spend more money.#2 â€“ The SMS workarounds you describe are really poor substitutions for proper integration with third party services or with the existing notification features of iOS and Android smartphones.For example, if the ZCRM calendar would sync with Google Calendar in real time instead of every 2 â€“ 6 hours (depending on subscription) then your users would be able to see updates to their calendars immediately on their computers and on their mobile smart phones.Tasks are another example. Zoho Tasks do not dynamically sync with Google Tasks or other third party task management systems.Furthermore, the ZCRM Android app does not provide any notifications for upcoming tasks, meetings or calls in the notification bar of the phone or tablet.And finally, because Zoho mail does not function as an IMAP client for my companyâ€™s e-mail I cannot use Zoho mail to manage correspondence and track it efficiently in ZCRM. If I cannot sync all folders with all of my devices to a central mail client then the service becomes much more trouble than it is worth.For me, my #1 concern with ZCRM is the slow pace of integration with 3rd party services. These are the three real world scenarios that I would like to see the Development team address:FULL, real-time integration with Google CalendarFULL, real-time integration with Google Tasks (including reminders)The ability to use Zoho Mail as an IMAP client for my mail.I do appreciate the usefulness of the SMS capabilities with Contacts.However, the way you have set it up with restriction to only offering the service to Enterprise users makes it a non-starter for me. I would much prefer that you focus on the three items I listed above. All of those things have been in demand for several years. A simple search in the ZCRM forum can verify this claim.

I agree with Al: re â€œWhy make this SMS reminder so complicated? Just as you offer the reminder option in Calendar as a pop-up or email reminder, why not offer a 3rd option as an SMS reminder too. Google Calendar offers all 3 options. Itâ€™s Quick! Itâ€™s Simple! Itâ€™s Easy! And the Google Calendar SMS reminder is very useful. I use it daily since Iâ€™m not always sitting at my desk to see the Zoho pop-up or read the email reminders. I use both calendars but when I need a reminder, I use Google Calendar.â€â€“ In general â€“ I am a big fan of Zohoâ€™s evolving products and product lines â€“ but I do believe that many new features, add-ons and â€˜appsâ€™ at times are waaayyy too complicated â€“ they often get streamlined over time â€“ but in the beginning â€“ it can be a struggleâ€¦â€“ at least they listen to feedback and respond and adaptD

It is great to see SMS functionality creeping into Zoho. It would be better to see the ability to send SMS directly to anyone from within Zoho. For example, have the same ability to send SMS messages as you can currently with email via the send mail button. That would include bulk SMS.

Why make this SMS reminder so complicated? Just as you offer the reminder option in Calendar as a pop-up or email reminder, why not offer a 3rd option as an SMS reminder too. Google Calendar offers all 3 options. Itâ€™s Quick! Itâ€™s Simple! Itâ€™s Easy! And the Google Calendar SMS reminder is very useful. I use it daily since Iâ€™m not always sitting at my desk to see the Zoho pop-up or read the email reminders. I use both calendars but when I need a reminder, I use Google Calendar.